IVANOV. Pasha! (Stops him.) What’s wrong with me?
LEBEDEV. I’ve been meaning to ask you about that, yes, but I confess I was too shy. I don’t know, pal! On the one hand, I had the impression that you’ve been suffering all kinds of bad luck, on the other hand, I know that you’re not that sort of fellow, that you . . . You wouldn’t let trouble get you down. It’s something else, Nikolasha, but what it is — I don’t understand.
IVANOV. I don’t understand either. The way I see it, it’s either . . . although, no!
Pause.
You see, here’s what I was about to say. I used to have a workman, Semyon, you remember him. Once, at threshing time, he wanted to show off his strength to the farm girls, hoisted two sacks of rye on to his back and got a hernia. He died soon after. The way I see it, I’ve got my own personal hernia. High school, university, then farming, district schools, projects . . . I didn’t believe the same things as other people, I didn’t marry like other people, I’d get enthused, I’d take risks, I’d throw away money, as you well know, right, left and center, I was happy and miserable like no one else in the whole district. Those were all my sacks of rye, Pasha . . . I hoisted a load on my back, and my back caved in. At the age of twenty we’re all heroes, we take it all on, can do it all, and by thirty we’re already worn out, good for nothing at all. How else can you explain this lassitude? But, maybe I’m wrong . . . Wrong, wrong! . . . God bless you, Pasha, you must be sick and tired of me.
LEBEDEV (briskly). You know what? Your surroundings, my boy, have got you down!
IVANOV. That’s stupid, Pasha, and stale. Get out!
LEBEDEV. It really is stupid. Now I can see for myself it’s stupid. I’m going, I’m going! . . . (Exits.)
VI
IVANOV, then LVOV.
IVANOV. No-good, pathetic, insignificant, that’s the kind of man I am. You have to be an equally pathetic, broken-down, flabby-faced drunk, like Pasha, to go on loving and respecting me. How I despise myself, my God! How profoundly I hate my voice, my walk, my hands, my clothes, my thoughts. Well, isn’t this ridiculous, isn’t this offensive? Barely a year’s gone by since I was healthy and strong, I was hale and hearty, indefatigable, impassioned, worked with these very hands, talked so that even ignoramuses were moved to tears, was capable of weeping when I saw misery, feel outraged when I encountered evil. I knew the meaning of inspiration, I knew the splendor and poetry of quiet nights, when from dusk to dawn you sit at your desk or beguile your mind with dreams. I had faith, I gazed into the future as into the eyes of a loving mother . . . And now, oh, my God! I’m weary, I have no faith, I waste days and nights in idleness. They don’t obey me, brains or hands or feet. The estate goes to rack and ruin, the forests topple beneath the axe. (Weeps.) My land stares at me like an orphan. I have no expectations, no compassion for anything, my mind quakes in fear of the day to come . . . And this business with Sarra? I swore everlasting love, I promised happiness, I opened before her eyes a future she had never dreamed of. She believed in it. For the past five years all I could see was how she was flickering out under the weight of her sacrifices, how she was growing exhausted struggling with her conscience, but, God knows, not a single black look at me or word of reproach . . . And then what? I fell out of love with her . . . How? Why? What for? I don’t understand. Here she is suffering, her days are numbered, while I, like the lowest of cowards, run away from her pale face, sunken chest, imploring eyes . . . Shameful, shameful!
Pause.
Sasha, a mere girl, is affected by my misfortunes. She declares her love for me, almost an old man, and I get intoxicated, forget about everything in this world, enchanted as if by music, and I shout: “A new life! Happiness!” But the next day I believe as little in this life and happiness as I do in fairies . . . What’s wrong with me? What abyss am I pushing myself into? What is the source of this debility of mine? What has become of my nerves? My sick wife has only to wound my vanity or a servant-girl get something wrong, or a gun misfire, and I turn rude, nasty, a different person entirely . . .
Pause.
I don’t understand, I don’t understand, I don’t understand! I simply feel like blowing my brains out! . . .
LVOV (enters). I’ve got to have it out with you, Nikolay Alekseevich!
IVANOV. If we were to have it out every day, Doctor, we’d be too debilitated for anything else.
LVOV. Will you be so good as to listen to me?
IVANOV. I listen to you every day and so far I can’t understand a thing: what do you personally want from me?
LVOV. I speak clearly and firmly, and the only person who could fail to understand me is one without a heart.
IVANOV. My wife is facing death, that I know; I have unpardonably wronged her, that I also know; you’re a decent, upright man, I know that too! What more do you want?
LVOV. I am outraged by human cruelty . . . A woman is dying. She has a father and mother whom she loves and would like to see before she dies; they know perfectly well that she will die soon and that she goes on loving them, but, damn their cruelty, they evidently want Jehovah to see how steadfast they are in their religion; they still go on cursing her! You, the man for whom she sacrificed everything—her religion and her parents’ home and her peace of mind, — in the most blatant manner and with the most blatant intentions you head over to those Lebedevs every day!
IVANOV. Oh, I haven’t been there for two weeks now . . .
LVOV (not listening to him). People such as you have to be spoken to bluntly, with no beating around the bush, and if you don’t like what I have to say, then don’t listen! I’m used to calling things by their rightful names . . . You need this death in order to carry out new feats of valor, all right, but can’t you at least wait? If you were to let her die in the natural scheme of things, without stabbing her with your barefaced cynicism, would the Lebedevs and their dowry disappear? Not now, but in a year or two, you, a wonderful Tartuffe, will manage to turn a young girl’s head and make off with her dowry just the same as now . . . Why are you in such a hurry? Why do you need your wife to die now, and not in a month or a year’s time?
IVANOV. This is excruciating . . . Doctor, you’re a really bad physician if you suppose that a man can control himself forever. It’s taking the most appalling willpower not to reply to your insults.
LVOV. That’s enough, who are you trying to fool? Drop the mask.
IVANOV. Clever man, think of this: in your opinion, nothing’s easier than understanding me! Right? I married Anna to get a big dowry . . . I didn’t get the dowry, I missed the mark, and now I’m driving her to her grave, in order to marry another woman and get that dowry . . . Right? How simple and uncomplicated . . . A man is such a simple and unsophisticated machine . . . No, Doctor, each of us has far more cogs, screws and valves in him than to enable us to judge one another on first impressions or a few outward signs. I don’t understand you, you don’t understand me, we don’t understand one another. You may be an excellent general practitioner— and still have no understanding of people. Don’t be so smug and look at it my way.